Part 10 (1/2)
”Ha.s.sim waits,” was the curt answer.
”Did he tell you to return?” asked Lingard.
”No! What need?” said the other in a surprised tone.
Lingard seized his hand impulsively.
”If I had ten men like you!” he cried.
”We are ten, but they are twenty to one,” said Jaffir, simply.
Lingard opened the door.
”Do you want anything that a man can give?” he asked.
The Malay had a moment of hesitation, and Lingard noticed the sunken eyes, the prominent ribs, and the worn-out look of the man.
”Speak out,” he urged with a smile; ”the bearer of a gift must have a reward.”
”A drink of water and a handful of rice for strength to reach the sh.o.r.e,” said Jaffir st.u.r.dily. ”For over there”--he tossed his head--”we had nothing to eat to-day.”
”You shall have it--give it to you with my own hands,” muttered Lingard.
He did so, and thus lowered himself in Jaffir's estimation for a time.
While the messenger, squatting on the floor, ate without haste but with considerable earnestness, Lingard thought out a plan of action. In his ignorance as to the true state of affairs in the country, to save Ha.s.sim from the immediate danger of his position was all that he could reasonably attempt. To that end Lingard proposed to swing out his long-boat and send her close insh.o.r.e to take off Ha.s.sim and his men. He knew enough of Malays to feel sure that on such a night the besiegers, now certain of success, and being, Jaffir said, in possession of everything that could float, would not be very vigilant, especially on the sea front of the stockade. The very fact of Jaffir having managed to swim off undetected proved that much. The brig's boat could--when the frequency of lightning abated--approach unseen close to the beach, and the defeated party, either stealing out one by one or making a rush in a body, would embark and be received in the brig.
This plan was explained to Jaffir, who heard it without the slightest mark of interest, being apparently too busy eating. When the last grain of rice was gone, he stood up, took a long pull at the water bottle, muttered: ”I hear. Good. I will tell Ha.s.sim,” and tightening the rag round his loins, prepared to go. ”Give me time to swim ash.o.r.e,” he said, ”and when the boat starts, put another light beside the one that burns now like a star above your vessel. We shall see and understand. And don't send the boat till there is less lightning: a boat is bigger than a man in the water. Tell the rowers to pull for the palm-grove and cease when an oar, thrust down with a strong arm, touches the bottom. Very soon they will hear our hail; but if no one comes they must go away before daylight. A chief may prefer death to life, and we who are left are all of true heart. Do you understand, O big man?”
”The chap has plenty of sense,” muttered Lingard to himself, and when they stood side by side on the deck, he said: ”But there may be enemies on the beach, O Jaffir, and they also may shout to deceive my men. So let your hail be Lightning! Will you remember?”
For a time Jaffir seemed to be choking.
”Lit-ing! Is that right? I say--is that right, O strong man?” Next moment he appeared upright and shadowy on the rail.
”Yes. That's right. Go now,” said Lingard, and Jaffir leaped off, becoming invisible long before he struck the water. Then there was a splash; after a while a spluttering voice cried faintly, ”Lit-ing! Ah, ha!” and suddenly the next thunder-squall burst upon the coast. In the cras.h.i.+ng flares of light Lingard had again and again the quick vision of a white beach, the inclined palm-trees of the grove, the stockade by the sea, the forest far away: a vast landscape mysterious and still--Ha.s.sim's native country sleeping unmoved under the wrath and fire of Heaven.
IV
A Traveller visiting Wajo to-day may, if he deserves the confidence of the common people, hear the traditional account of the last civil war, together with the legend of a chief and his sister, whose mother had been a great princess suspected of sorcery and on her death-bed had communicated to these two the secrets of the art of magic. The chief's sister especially, ”with the aspect of a child and the fearlessness of a great fighter,” became skilled in casting spells. They were defeated by the son of their uncle, because--will explain the narrator simply--”The courage of us Wajo people is so great that magic can do nothing against it. I fought in that war. We had them with their backs to the sea.”
And then he will go on to relate in an awed tone how on a certain night ”when there was such a thunderstorm as has been never heard of before or since” a s.h.i.+p, resembling the s.h.i.+ps of white men, appeared off the coast, ”as though she had sailed down from the clouds. She moved,” he will affirm, ”with her sails bellying against the wind; in size she was like an island; the lightning played between her masts which were as high as the summits of mountains; a star burned low through the clouds above her. We knew it for a star at once because no flame of man's kindling could have endured the wind and rain of that night. It was such a night that we on the watch hardly dared look upon the sea. The heavy rain was beating down our eyelids. And when day came, the s.h.i.+p was nowhere to be seen, and in the stockade where the day before there were a hundred or more at our mercy, there was no one. The chief, Ha.s.sim, was gone, and the lady who was a princess in the country--and n.o.body knows what became of them from that day to this. Sometimes traders from our parts talk of having heard of them here, and heard of them there, but these are the lies of men who go afar for gain. We who live in the country believe that the s.h.i.+p sailed back into the clouds whence the Lady's magic made her come. Did we not see the s.h.i.+p with our own eyes?
And as to Rajah Ha.s.sim and his sister, Mas Immada, some men say one thing and some another, but G.o.d alone knows the truth.”
Such is the traditional account of Lingard's visit to the sh.o.r.es of Boni. And the truth is he came and went the same night; for, when the dawn broke on a cloudy sky the brig, under reefed canvas and smothered in sprays, was storming along to the southward on her way out of the Gulf. Lingard, watching over the rapid course of his vessel, looked ahead with anxious eyes and more than once asked himself with wonder, why, after all, was he thus pressing her under all the sail she could carry. His hair was blown about by the wind, his mind was full of care and the indistinct shapes of many new thoughts, and under his feet, the obedient brig dashed headlong from wave to wave.
Her owner and commander did not know where he was going. That adventurer had only a confused notion of being on the threshold of a big adventure.
There was something to be done, and he felt he would have to do it. It was expected of him. The seas expected it; the land expected it. Men also. The story of war and of suffering; Jaffir's display of fidelity, the sight of Ha.s.sim and his sister, the night, the tempest, the coast under streams of fire--all this made one inspiring manifestation of a life calling to him distinctly for interference. But what appealed to him most was the silent, the complete, unquestioning, and apparently uncurious, trust of these people. They came away from death straight into his arms as it were, and remained in them pa.s.sive as though there had been no such thing as doubt or hope or desire. This amazing unconcern seemed to put him under a heavy load of obligation.
He argued to himself that had not these defeated men expected everything from him they could not have been so indifferent to his action. Their dumb quietude stirred him more than the most ardent pleading. Not a word, not a whisper, not a questioning look even! They did not ask! It flattered him. He was also rather glad of it, because if the unconscious part of him was perfectly certain of its action, he, himself, did not know what to do with those bruised and battered beings a playful fate had delivered suddenly into his hands.